


Switched

by justanotherbusyfangirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bodyswap, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 17:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16858651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherbusyfangirl/pseuds/justanotherbusyfangirl
Summary: Alex and Claire thought they were going to work for another normal day.  That isn’t what happened.





	1. Chapter 1

Alex dropped Claire off at the mall entrance, glad that their work schedules lined up for once.  They had been sharing a car ever since Claire totaled hers – Jody was making Claire earn enough money to buy a new one, instead of buying one for her.

So, naturally, Claire got a job at Hot Topic.

It wasn’t what she wanted to be doing, of course, but she needed the money and it was something easy.  Most of the time, retail jobs were obnoxious, with the stupid customers and moms with their hair cut into a perfect bob…but working at Hot Topic?  The only people who shopped there were nerds and weirdos – not the kind of people Claire had to suck up to in order to earn a paycheck.

Alex had been transferred to the research section of the hospital recently, so that’s where she headed once Claire shut her car door.  The hospital wasn’t terribly far away from the mall, small town and all, so she got there in no time and was soon wrist deep in her latest project.

An hour went by, both Claire and Alex getting lost in their jobs.  Work came first lately, so that’s what they did.

Alex was mixing some chemicals, noting the boiling temperature of different mixtures for the doctors.  There was some new drug being tested with some of their patients, and Alex was on the team to make sure that all was well with the results.  Luckily for her, so far so good.

She turned the knob on the Bunsen burner, making the flame go a little higher.  Her goggles were fogging up as she watched the liquid carefully, temperature showing to one side and stopwatch on the other.

Just as the chemicals were beginning to bubble, the lights in the office behind her flickered.  As Alex turned to see what was going on, a surge of electricity went through the room, making a few of the machines smoke and light bulbs to bust.  When Alex turned back to turn the Bunsen burner off, the flame grew five times bigger before the beaker exploded.

Alex turned to shield her face, falling to the floor.  

* * *

Claire woke up in the dark, unsure of how she had gotten to the floor in a pitch-black room.  She immediately was on high alert, unsure of what was going on.  

She stood slowly, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the dark of the room.  It was eerily quiet, so quiet that the hair on the back of Claire’s neck stood up.  She put her hands out in front of her, taking tentative steps forward as carefully as she could.

She found a long table that she followed to one side, then a few steps from the end of the table was a wall.  She followed the wall until she found a door, trying the handle.

To her surprise, it turned easily.  She opened the door, dim light falling into the room.  The door led to a long, white hallway and she could see that it ended with glass doors leading outside.

With the door open, Claire finally heard noises: people talking – shouting, really – and footsteps.  

Claire had only gone a few steps before she saw a sign on the wall – Sioux Falls Hospital.

How had she gotten to the hospital, when Alex dropped her off at the mall for work?  The last thing she remembered, she’d been in the back room of Hot Topic, organizing new inventory.

Claire’s phone rang in her pocket and she looked down at herself.  She was wearing a lab coat.  She reached into her back pocket and pulled out her phone – no, it was Alex’s phone.

Claire was calling.

“Hello?” Claire said tentatively, hearing a voice that was not hers come from her mouth.  

“Claire?” she heard the voice on the other side.  “Claire, please tell me that’s you.”

It was her voice talking over the phone.  She pulled it away from her face, seeing her name on the screen, before putting it back to her ear.  “Yeah, it’s me.”  Claire looked down again, seeing JONES written on her pocket.  “Alex?” she asked, unsure.

“Yeah, this is Alex.  We’ve switched bodies.”

“Fuck.”

Alex – in Claire’s body – was back at the hospital in less than ten minutes.  Claire hid out in the research lab, realizing that the lights were out because there had been a power surge that knocked out power to all of the non-necessary parts of the hospital.

“The power surge had to have something to do with the switch,” Alex said.  Claire watched her own face as Alex’s emotions and thoughts flew across it, fascinated with the way she looked.  It wasn’t every day you could watch yourself do things.

“So how do we switch back?” Claire asked, her feet swinging beneath the stool she was perched on.  She watched as her own shoulders shrugged, Alex unsure.

“I have no idea.”


	2. Chapter 2

_“So how do we switch back?” Claire asked, her feet swinging beneath the stool she was perched on.  She watched as her own shoulders shrugged, Alex unsure._

_“I have no idea.”_

Claire and Alex spent the next ten minutes detailing to each other exactly what they were doing when they switched bodies, coming to the conclusion that it had to have something to do with Alex’s labwork and the power going out.  While they couldn’t necessarily make the power go out, they could recreate the chemicals mixing, so that’s what they decided to do.

Claire handed over Alex’s lab coat before Alex got to work gathering everything she had been using before.  There was little for Claire to do besides watch, as she didn’t know much about science and felt like she’d just mess it all up.

Finally Alex was ready, Claire’s blond hair pulled back in a similar ponytail to what Alex wore to work each day.  The look was a bit strange on Claire, but Alex’s expressions on Claire’s face were strange enough, so Claire ignored it.

Alex looked to Claire to see if she was ready, getting a nod in return.

She turned the knob on the Bunsen burner, the flames raising as they’d done before.  She watched the temperature rise, her goggles fogging as they’d done before.

Alex bit her lip and scrunched her eyes as the beaker shook for a minute before exploding, just as it had before.

Both girls turned away, shielding their faces with their arms.  Once the explosion had calmed, they book a breath.

When they looked at each other, it was still from the wrong body.

“Damn,” Claire said, unsure if she had believed that would work or not.  Alex sighed, pushing the bits of glass into the sink that was placed in the middle of the lab table.

The lights and humming of machines flickered to life around them, all power coming back to the hospital.

“Well, there’s one thing that’s back to normal,” Claire said, looking up at the luminescent bulb above her.  “What if we need to completely recreate -  power outage and all?”

Alex swayed her head back and forth, considering what Claire suggested.  “If we are really going to try again, creating it as it was before, it was my body doing the lab, not yours.”

Claire sucked air in between her teeth, suddenly nervous.  “It’s been since, like, sophomore year that I did anything in a lab, and that was completely supervised…”

Alex shrugged.  “I’m out of ideas, then.”

The two of them sat on their lab stools, contemplating their situation.  After a minute had passed, Claire sighed.  “Fine, let’s try it.  But you’re really going to have to walk me through this.”

Alex nodded, handing over the lab coat and starting her instructions completely from scratch, including gathering the supplies Claire needed.  Claire paid more attention to Alex in those moments than she’d ever paid attention to anything before, wanting to make this work.

When the chemicals were heating on the burner, they met eyes.  “Here goes nothing,” Claire said, turning the burner up.

Just as the chemicals were bubbling, the office lights behind her began to flicker.  Alex gasped, remembering that happening just before she blacked out.  Claire knew Alex’s gasp was a good thing for them, so she turned the burner up just a bit more.  The lights in the room flickered before the beaker exploded, the hospital losing power once again.

At first, Claire couldn’t tell if it worked or not.  She was kneeling on the floor in the dark, but so was Alex next to her.  They were both breathing hard, too nervous to do anything.

“Claire?” Claire heard; the voice that was asking was definitely Alex’s.  

“Holy shit,” Claire responded, heart beating hard in relief of hearing her voice speak her words.

“Thank God,” Alex said, sighing with relief.  The lights around them flickered, power coming on again.  They smiled at each other as they saw the face sitting across from them, everything back to normal.

An hour later, after Alex’s boss came in to send her home since the power was on the fritz, Jody greeted the girls as they walked in the front door.

“Anything fun happen today?” she asked them.  Alex and Claire looked at each other with wide eyes before they both shrugged.

“Just a normal day, Jodes,” Claire said, heading to her room.  Jody gave Alex a look, expecting a more elaborate answer from the brunette.

“Yep, normal,” Alex agreed.  It was best that they keep their little body swap between themselves, or some people in their lives might think they were crazy.

But everyone’s a little bit crazy, right?


End file.
